■　Text by Xu Yunhui

In the final of women's all-around individual gymnastics on Sunday, Germany’s Uzbekistan-born Oxana Chusovitina might not have been as splendid as America's Valery Liukin, but she still deserved more respect than all the others. Elected one of the 100 Olympic Athletes to Watch in Beijing by Time Magazine, her extraordinary career has been driven by the motivation of her son and her great passion for gymnastics.

Chusovitina, 33, the only female gymnast to appear at five Olympics, once competed for her native Uzbekistan but moved to Germany to save the life of her son, who was diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia at the age of three in 2002.

"My son is my whole life. If I gave up the competitions, he would be dead," she told a reporter in a pre-Games interview. "I know every mother says that. But our bond is special. When he was ill I was devastated. He's my motivation. A gold medal and world championship title are equal to a bonus of 3000 Euros. That is what I can do for him."

She has proven herself on several occasions, including a silver medal in vault yesterday. It shows that there is more to her sport than age, most recently at this year's European championship, where she won gold in the vault, beating 15-year-old Russian wunderkind Ksenia Semenova.

Fortunately, her nine-year-old son Alisher is in steady condition now. Saving Alisher's life is not her only motivation, as she recently said: "There is nothing in the world I enjoy more than gymnastics."

"What I have done is to show them that you can make it," she said. “My goal is the 2012 London Olympics.”